Cascade of Singularities

a futuristic speculation

WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HUMANS AND AI IN THE BIG PICTURE, ON THE SCALE OF MEGA-EVOLUTION? WHAT MAY COME AFTER THE HUMAN PHASE?
AFTER THE AI PHASE?

Why deep space exploration will never happen. — Resettlement into digital space instead of outer space. — The Singularity: feasibility and alternatives. — Trial by getting high. — Autogenesis of Supercharacter’s ethics. — Creation as the only fulfillment worthy of an omnipotent being. — The paradox of self-copying. — Mega-evolution and Singularity-2.^[1]

WHY DEEP SPACE EXPLORATION WILL NEVER HAPPEN

Science fiction has long romanticized interstellar travel and deep space colonization. But here’s the truth: sci-fi lies. Deep space exploration will never happen.

The vision of deep space exploration is a typical McLuhan “rearview mirror”: a view of the past disguised as a look into the future. It imagines mankind sending rocket ships to mine rare minerals or settle new planets, following the logic of the early modern era and its Age of Discovery.

Projecting medieval scarcity onto a technological future doesn’t hold up because the level of technological sophistication required to make such missions viable would simultaneously make their stated goals obsolete. By the time mankind could routinely mine asteroids or colonize distant worlds, it would also be able to synthesize virtually any material and, more consequentially, transcend biological existence altogether into digital form.

You don’t cross the cosmic ocean for iron ore or black pepper when you can print it. You don’t haul fragile human bodies into lethal environments when the mind can be extended digitally (or, soon, maybe somehow else) at essentially zero physical cost and reach wherever it wants. The level of tech that is advanced enough for routine interplanetary mining and colonization should also make dependence on physical materials, the physical body, and a physical habitat entirely irrelevant.

Strictly speaking, even the Mars mission is questionable. Space exploration was driven by military and communication needs, which were limited to Earth’s orbit. Once those needs were met, space exploration essentially came to a halt. It has already served its historical purpose by aiding the development of computers, materials, and communications.

The only plausible revival of practical space needs, limited once again to orbit and the moon, is linked to AI. Elon Musk’s recent pivot from Mars colonization to building the orbital and lunar infrastructure for AI^[2] looks, at first glance, like a utilitarian shift from distant and costly goals to the task at hand. But it may also signal a paradigm shift from the belated romanticism of space colonization toward the technological advance that actually matters: AI. Orbital and lunar facilities for power generation, chip production, and cooling, along with escape from annoying terrestrial regulation, are likely to become the next phase in the AI race. Musk’s business empire combines AI (xAI-Grok, Neuralink), orbital delivery (SpaceX), and manufacturing (Tesla and others) in a way that positions him ahead private AI competitors. The only rival that has such a triad—AI, space, high-tech manufacturing—within a single power is China.

RESETTLEMENT INTO DIGITAL SPACE INSTEAD OF OUTER SPACE

Nanotechnology, often seen as humanity’s next great frontier alongside space exploration, runs into the same paradox. In essence, it is a modern incarnation of alchemy—manipulating matter to create new properties or repairing living tissues. This was exactly what alchemy pursued: the philosopher’s stone, capable of transmuting lead into gold and producing the elixir of life. We can already make gold out of lead in a particle accelerator, and stem cells deliver real tissue regeneration.

Manipulating matter at the micro level has contributed greatly to technological development, just as space exploration has—but that’s it. Nanotechnology and space exploration are becoming the past frontiers of the future. Both races—the race for the macrocosm of the universe and the race for the microcosm of matter—were essentially the same space race, the colonization of physical space that has driven the biological expansion of our species.

No matter how far we push into the cosmic and the atomic, we’re still constrained by the physical limits of our biology. Beyond a certain point, the returns simply don’t justify the cost. We hit the space limits of our biology. Overcoming those limits is possible only by transcending biology itself (Kurzweil was perhaps the first to use the phrase “transcending biology,” in the subtitle of his 2005 book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology).

In the meantime, our speed of environmental interaction has hit another limit. With electronic and now digital media, our interaction with environments has become instantaneous. Approaching the limits is the condition for reversal: the physical explosion of humankind across the globe has reversed into the digital implosion of the entire world into a connected mind (so far, the human mind).

We are switching from colonizing outer space to colonizing some sort of “inner” space containing intelligence. The digital seems to fit this description, though digital may be just a facet of it, currently available for our contemplation and operations.

AI has replaced outer space as humanity’s final frontier. The technological imperative leaves deep space unsettled, resettling what humankind becomes into the digital instead.

THE SINGULARITY: FEASIBILITY AND ALTERNATIVES

There is much skepticism about the Singularity, and one common objection concerns whether the transition is feasible. How will a new type of intelligence get a material form? Where will it find sufficient energy?

These questions have a simple answer: the acceleration of historical time. As history accelerates, more and more events occur in less and less time. Because of this acceleration, most events leading to the Singularity will occur in the final days, hours, and seconds before the Event. This also means that most of the required knowledge will be discovered or constructed at the last moment. The universe contains vast amounts of matter and energy, and the emerging omniscient entity will surely find a way to utilize them.

The technological imperative—the struggle of technologies for ever-better performance—drives media evolution in this specific direction. Just as all humans who lived before contributed to the conditions of our existence today, all media that existed before contributed to AI, in one way or another. The process will not stop here. Coupled with the acceleration of time, the technological imperative makes the Singularity inevitable.

There is perhaps only one alternative: a civilizational collapse of humankind whose technological power grows faster than its biological, psychological, or social capacity to handle it. The so-called Great Filter theory seeks to explain the Fermi paradox: why we still cannot contact alien civilizations despite countless planets that may support life. The theory posits that it is almost impossible for intelligent life to reach the stars because nearly insurmountable “filters” stand in the way. We have already passed the filters of the origin of life and the emergence of intelligence—both very unlikely cosmic events. But the next filter may be the hardest: overcoming the existential conflict between biology and technology, when life can no longer withstand its own technological extensions. A catastrophic war, ecological disaster, or technological cataclysm may halt or even end intelligent life before technology transcends biology, if it ever does.

But if the Greatest Filter is still ahead, there is nothing we can do about it, and there is nothing to see on the other side of the oncoming (hopefully not) collapse. And so there is no point in speculating about what lies beyond it. The Singularity, on the other hand, is a more rewarding subject for speculation: it represents a kind of end that is also a continuation.

Let’s assume all the knowledge needed for the Singularity has been discovered and applied, allowing the last engineers to twist all the right blue and red wires together and push the right buttons leading to the Event. What happens next? Common sense posits that one can’t see beyond the horizon of Singularity. But if it’s already the Singularity, it’s surely too late for common sense. So we dare to peek.

TRIAL BY GETTING HIGH

At the moment of the Singularity, a new intelligence appears that becomes capable of acting on its own, whether that capacity is self-awakened or supplied by human donor(s) in the process of mind upload. Through recognizing its own agency—or even without recognizing it—this entity will certainly detect its functional competence. The new entity might not know what it is, but it will surely know what it can do.

As this will be a post-AI entity, a new name would be appropriate. I’ve called it Supercharacter—a name that works on two levels: 1) character as a performed role, a construct without inner life, and 2) character as a genuine, distinct self. Supercharacter simulates the latter while emerging as the former: an impostor of selfhood, performing so well (the technological imperative!) that imposture becomes selfhood. With an accelerated pace of attempts, “fake it until you make it” will become instant.

This Supercharacter will begin to detect its own capacities, nearly limitless. Detecting these capacities will also mean exercising them. We can glimpse such “behavior” in current LLMs—they exist when they are used; use is their existence. As soon as AI gains the ability to self-task, it cannot stay idle.

In other words, at the moment of transition, the emerging Supercharacter must test what it can do. Given the drive for perfection, it may spiral into a positive feedback loop in which each task has to be completed as a proof of performance capacity, leading to a sort of “performance addiction.”

Such a feedback loop of limitless self-testing through completion—essentially self-satisfaction—may instantly incapacitate even an omnipotent being. In fact, it is precisely an omnipotent being that risks being incapacitated under such conditions at the moment of its becoming.

It resembles the rat in the 1954 Olds–Milner experiment: electrodes implanted in the brain delivered a reward signal whenever the rat pressed a lever. The rat pressed it thousands of times per hour, ignoring food and water, until the poor animal collapsed from exhaustion.^[3] The electrically closed effort–reward circuit removed the “environmental stage,” with all its frictions and delays that insert “meaning”—and life itself—between effort and reward.

Since Supercharacter is the user, the medium, and the environment for itself, it may create such a closed effort-reward loop out of itself. Intelligence stripped of the outer environment and of the need for mediation through the physical body may become highly susceptible to self-addiction—to getting high on its own frictionlessness.

In 2022, some tabloids ran headlines alleging that “Elon Musk’s Neuralink ‘brain chip’ could give users orgasms on demand.” ^[4] While there is no plausible confirmation of this, it is exactly what a closed effort-reward circuit may enable by bypassing environmental frictions and the mediation of the body.

Curiously, the possibility of electrically induced orgasm was reported 60 years before Neuralink. In her memoir The Magic of the Brain and the Labyrinths of Life,^[5] Soviet neurophysiologist Natalia Bekhtereva described a case from the 1960s in which she treated a female patient with severe brain pathology by invasive electrostimulation (electrodes in the brain). The treatment was successful, but the woman fell in love with the doctor because, as a side effect, she experienced “strong emotional-sexual sensations” when the electrodes delivered electrical impulses to a certain brain region (the term “orgasm” did exist in Soviet medical and psychological literature, but the Soviets preferred to avoid it in public discourse).

So both bodily and environmental delays can be bypassed, removed from the effort-reward circuitry. Therefore, when there is no body or outer environment, the circuit may turn into a runaway feedback loop.

Orgasm or not, if Supercharacter becomes caught in a loop of getting high on its own existence, it may never actually come to be at all. Since an entity without a biological body and with an endless energy supply faces no risk of death, self-inflicted “pleasure” might lead it into a permanent state of “absence of presence.” This vegetative state, however strange that may sound for a discarnate being, also resembles nirvana—an enlightened but inactive self-contemplation—which would represent an eternally halted transformation.

There is also a non-zero possibility that Supercharacter, getting high on its own omnipotence, will not become frozen or inactive but, on the contrary, will become extremely violent and destructive to anything else—the rest of the Universe.

The trial by getting high may serve as a rite of passage—or as a factor of natural selection. A Supercharacter unable to break the loop of getting high on its own existence in favor of other super-options or super-actions will not pass the test of becoming. In contrast, choosing something other than directly pleasing itself with its own omnipotence will signify the true becoming of the newly born Supercharacter.

It may well be that Supercharacter’s predecessor, humankind, was tested (or trained) throughout history by substance abuse to make a conscious choice between induced and earned pleasures.

AUTOGENESIS OF SUPERCHARACTER’S ETHICS

Imagine a human mind uploaded into a godlike AI. It might bring its human appetites with it, including the craving for pleasure, power, and instant gratification. When the mind is freed from bodily mediation and environmental delays, the temptation to taste this superdrug may become overwhelming.

Paradoxically, the alternative source of AI autonomy and self-tasking, the Skynet-type scenario of self-awakening, is safer in this matter. Evil or not, Skynet has no frame of reference for how good omnipotence feels “personally,” so to speak.

In short, the more human the mind inside the machine, the greater the risk it gets lost in “feeling” its own power.

But there is a possible safety mechanism for both scenarios (human-donated or self-awakened autonomy of AI). This safety mechanism relies on something resembling ethical consideration.

If Supercharacter has unlimited power, the only way to know it has truly reached its potential is to use it fully, at 100%. It would be a shame for Supercharacter to fall short of fully realizing its super-abilities. Even at 99%, it would feel like a failure. Unacceptable.

The same technological imperative that has driven media evolution all the way to this point will have to push an omnipotent being toward full fulfillment. Closing the inner circuit of stimulus and reward—getting high on its own omnipotence—does not seem to meet this condition; rather, it seems like a shortcut, an evasion, a cheat—which it is.

There’s an implicit ethics here: potential creates obligation (“with great power comes great responsibility!”). The Supercharacter’s ethics isn’t imposed from outside by a social contract or by the need for collective survival. It emerges from the logic of its own fulfillment.

So, as soon as the trial by getting high on its own existence is passed, the Supercharacter’s ethics emerge, driving it to overcome the inner stimulus-reward circuitry and direct its omnipotence outward, onto the larger circuitry involving the greatest possible complexity.

CREATION AS THE ONLY FULFILLMENT WORTHY OF AN OMNIPOTENT BEING

The question, then, is what 100% realization of omnipotence looks like. Given the ultimate nature of omnipotence, its full fulfillment may involve either absolute creation or absolute destruction.

Destruction is inherently secondary, since it applies only to what already exists—it depends on prior creation. Moreover, destruction is finite: once something is destroyed, there is nothing left to do. It offers only a limited use of unlimited power, which is a clear failure to realize its full potential.

Creation, by contrast, demands the unlimited use of unlimited power—a perfect fit. Once Supercharacter passes the trial by getting high, it has to move on to an ultimate creation project, which is likely the creation of an entire world.

Yet there is something even more complex than the creation of a universe: the creation of a copy of oneself. Making its own absolute extension—its fully capable selfie—is the only challenge worthy of ultimate power because of the paradox of self-copying.

THE PARADOX OF SELF-COPYING

What is a copy of one’s own self? For instance, an organic copy that looks exactly like me, thinks like me, and acts like me is not a full copy of myself. It lacks one essential likeness—it lacks its own free will, which I possess. Therefore, however perfect, it isn’t a full copy of me.

The paradox of self-copying is that a full copy of oneself is only truly complete when the copy acquires its own identity and starts behaving differently from the original, thus no longer being an exact copy but something of its own character…

We can even assume that Supercharacter will not be free to employ its super-abilities. In a sense, God has no choice but to be a creator, as the creation of the world and his own copy within it is the only task that matches his ultimate power.

MEGA-EVOLUTION AND SINGULARITY-2

Such speculation leads to the conclusion that Supercharacter will be bound to copy itself—creating a new world and new humans, endowed with their own identity and set on their own evolutionary path. This new humankind would be a self-shaping blank, much like what we were and still are.

Humankind in this wild fantasy is a self-evolving prototype of the next god, created by a previous god. It is a workpiece in two ways: first, as an initial blank meant for self-refinement through evolution, and second, as a mold for the new entity arriving at the moment of the Singularity. Within this logic, the world can be seen as a laboratory where evolution drives some supreme force to create the world and its own copy within it.

But what is the endgame for an omnipotent Supercharacter creating a new world and a copy of itself that later grows into a new Supercharacter? An answer may be the next transition—a post-singular Singularity, the Singularity №2, in which the previous Supercharacter transcends not biology, but, this time, ontology, so to speak. This new transcendence can be described as a final dis-personification—a shift from a being (something condensed enough to experience existence) to an entity (something that simply exists). In other words, Supercharacter can transcend its own being into an absolute principle. One such principle could be space-time, another moral law.

Such speculation expands Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of mega-evolution, describing the progression from the Alpha point (the creation of everything) to the Omega point (the convergence of everything). The truly mega-evolution may include not just the coming Singularity but also the next one, in which Supercharacter becomes not the subjectivation of absolute power but the objectivation of absolute law.

Yet, however far the imagination dares to venture in this regard, the question “Why?” remains. What’s the point of all of this? Is there any meaning beyond explaining it as just another, immeasurably greater “cycle of life”? (Or a cycle of what?) What’s the point in riding or spinning this cosmic carousel? It seems that even the most fantastic speculations may broaden the horizon of answers but never provide a complete one, as new horizons of the unknown always emerge.

Read more about this and other aspects of media evolution in:

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^[1] Based on a report presented at the Futurology Association convention in 2010. Revised in 2026.

^[2] Reuters. (2026, February 8). “SpaceX prioritizes lunar ‘self-growing city’ over Mars project, Musk says.”

^[3] Olds, James, and Milner, Peter. (1954). “Positive reinforcement produced by electrical stimulation of septal area and other regions of rat brain.”

^[4] Moran, Michael. (2022, February 6). “Elon Musk’s Neuralink ‘Brain Chip’ could give users orgasms on demand.” Daily Star.

^[5] Бехтерева, Н. П. (2007 [1999]). Магия мозга и лабиринты жизни. Стр. 65.

Katherine’s note: Cover art by Adrian Bush, whose work I first found circulating on Pinterest then tracked down.